Dave's Rant

Anti-vaxers being herded into box canyon
We’re all sick of hearing about COVID and trying to deal with the confusing and infinitely self-contradictory dictates about masking. I don’t want to write about it any more! But one fact we can’t avoid:
The large majority of the new infections, hospitalizations and deaths now are among the unvaccinated.
Relative to the rest of the pandemic, the nationwide numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are low—they’re far below numbers seen back in April of 2020.
But rates of cases among the unvaccinated in some places rival those seen at the heights of the pandemic. And areas with low vaccination coverage are seeing surges.
The unvaccinated are being herded- not by government but by the teeny-weeny virus itself- into a box canyon—in a few months nearly all new infections, hospitalizations and deaths will be among the unvaccinated.
Who wants to be in that sick box canyon?
Anti-vaccination opinions are not conservative—the best way to “conserve” our lives of yes-teryear with regard to COVID is to get free of the threat of COVID by getting vaccinated!
And then forget it and get back to your life!
Jesus said (Matthew 7:3): “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
Get vaccinated!
Info: shpr.fyi/antivaxbox

Don’t Wanna Pay Ransom Gangs? Test Your Backups!
by BrianKrebs
Browse the comments on vir-tually any story about a ran-somware attack and you will almost surely encounter the view that the victim organization could have avoided paying their extortionists if only they’d had proper data backups. But the ugly truth is there are many non-obvious reasons why victims end up paying even when they have done nearly everything right from a data backup per-spective.
One of the most common problems is that restoring from backups can take weeks, even months, far longer than the company can be out of business or the software or its key needed to do the restoration or even the backups are among the ransom-encrypted files.
Test your backups!
Info: shpr.fyi/testbackups

Dirt not dirty
Dig a teaspoon into your near-est clump of soil, and what you’ll emerge with will contain more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. We know this from lab studies that ana-lyze samples of earth scooped from the microbial wild to de-termine which forms of micro-scopic life exist in the world beneath our feet.
This prompted scientists to spy on these underground work-ers, who are indispensable in their role as organic matter recy-cling agents, without disturbing their micro-habitats.
See their fascinating views in-to soil organisms in action by clicking the link below.
Indispensible- YES!
Some common soil microor-ganisms are the critters that di-gest our home wastewater in our septic systems as well as in community treatment plants where these very same organ-isms are brought in as the active ingredients.
Most people don’t understand that our septic tanks containing anaerobic (no oxygen, “septic” means no oxygen) soil organisms process 98-99% of the waste we put into them into harmless soil substances, and then the aerobic (using oxygen) critters in our drainfields take care of the rest. That’s why a river flowing near a community of hundreds of septic systems does not get polluted- the intervening soil has treated- digested- any remaining pollutants.
Also some of these common soil organisms are also the “friendly” organisms in our large intestine that do that critical final step in our digestion.
Several times in my life, after finishing treatment with strong anti-biotic pills (which kill also all the “friendly” critters throughout our body) I’ve eaten a teaspoon of yes gritty soil from my yard to replenish my “friendly” bacteria. Unthinkable? Hardly! Many root vegetables unavoidably include some soil as we eat them. Some medications to replenish our “friendly” organisms are nothing but soil with the grit removed.
Info: shpr.fyi/gooddirt

July 4 Largest Ever Ransomware Attack
The largest-ever ransomware attack timed to coincide with the US July 4 holiday weekend locked up the IT systems of “well over 50,000 businesses” across the world, according to the US cybersecurity firm Hunt-ress Labs. Many of the largest firms such as Fidelity were tak-en offline.
Fifty to 60 percent of the company Kaseya’s 37,000 cus-tomers were victimized – but 70 percent of those were “managed service providers” who provide Kaseya’s software to many oth-ers.
The attack encrypted infected businesses’ data, locking those firms out of their own IT sys-tems. The hackers demanded ransoms of $50,000 from small-er companies and $5 million from larger companies in ex-change for a special key that would allow them to decrypt their data and resume normal operations.
Kaseya’s was the worst ransomware attack to date because it spread through software that companies known as managed service providers use on multiple customers.
Astoundingly, Kaseya the firm whose software was used to safeguard the 50,000 companies’ files and then hacked to enable the attack, received a master key that would unlock all of the encrypted files. Kaseya didn’t divulge whether the millions of ransom had been paid.
But the key was provided on-ly after most companies had already spent days and thou-sands of dollars restoring their files from backups.
The attack was done by REvil, a known Russian attacker firm.
Biden called Putin to press him to stop providing safe ha-ven for cybercriminals and threatened to make Russia pay a price for failing to crack down but has not specified what measures if any the U.S. may take. Experts expect none.
Info: shpr.fyi/kaseyaransom

Indepth discussion of chances if not vaccinated
“If you don’t get vaccinated, will you get COVID?
“I think the best answer we can give right now is… probably. Odds are, eventually you’ll get it — perhaps from a currently circulating variant, perhaps from a future variant.”
Open this link to read the entire in-depth analysis:
Info: shpr.fyi/infectimmune

U.S Longevity Drops
U.S. life expectancy fell by a year and a half in 2020, the larg-est one-year decline since World War II. More than 3.3 million Americans died last year, far more than any other year in U.S. history.
Info: shpr.fyi/uslongevity
Dave Bunting, July 25, 2021

Water, landslide and other damage occurs annually to every mile of every road, especially here in our heavy rainfall climate.

Some such damage is minor such that its repair can be handled in normal scheduled periodic maintenance. Some damage is major, making the road unsafe or impossible to drive, and requires a project to repair it.

Repair of these damages are essential to maintain access. Even the minor damages must be regularly repaired, or they accumulate to become major obstacles to drivability of the road. Significant maintenance must be scheduled and funded annually to cover both the accumulated minor damages and the less frequent major damages that are more expensive to repair. The amount of such annual damage is somewhat constant over the years, so the amount of funds needed annually can be estimated reasonably accurately.

Sadly, through changes in personnel and administration at the top Washington DC levels, through recent decades, the Forest Service has regrettably and surprisingly lost the simple mechanical process of estimating, totaling up and applying for this adequate funding annually from the Congress. Allowing this loss is grounds for legitimate, very serious criticism of the Forest Service’s high-level managers.

Thus, sadly local districts are usually allotted only a small fraction of the money they need to keep the roads open, and to thus keep the forests usable and manageable. Highest level Forest Service managers do not know how much money the districts need, and do not even ask the districts for that amount. How they determine the ludicrously low amounts they request for road maintenance is a mystery.

Last year’s road maintenance funding to the Cowlitz Valley Ranger District was very inadequate, only a fraction of funds needed in an average year. This year the District’s funding was cut in half.

Fortunately, Pacific Northwest leaders especially our own Congresswoman Jaime Herrera-Beutler, have recognized this serious funding gap, and created the Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads, or ERFO. ERFO makes at least some of the gap funding available but requires the district staff to make extensive and wasteful-of-time applications for the funds,  project by project. Most of those funds should be simply in their basic annual appropriation.

We the public, the owners of the forests, depend upon road access for all of our uses of the forests including such as hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, berry and mushroom picking, wildlife viewing, income-supplementing commercial gathering of forest products, and many others. An additional important aspect of “our use” of the forest is the use, on our behalf and for our benefit, by our hired forest employees’ activities, including management of recreation, vegetation including timber, wildlife including hunting and poaching enforcement, water, soils, minerals, cultural resources, law enforcement, and of course, their critically important fire suppression.

A forest without roads cannot be used or managed in any real sense.

Our national forests are dedicated to these above “Multiple Uses,” unlike lands such as National Parks, which are dedicated to only viewing from afar and not touching. Nearly all direct use of the forest in a National Park is strictly prohibited.

A forest without roads is thus indeed “useless.” Closing of roads, whether intentionally for some reason, or by allowing them to close by becoming undriveable due to unrepaired weather damage, prevents all normal uses and management of the forest.

A forest without roads is use-less.

Responsible management of our forests for our multiple uses requires keeping our forest roads open, so our forests remain useful and manageable.

Responsible forest management requires seeking and obtaining sufficient funds to keep the forest roads open and the forests useful and managed.

Closing a road closes the forest.